Featured speakers include:

• Ferd Hoefner, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
• Bahia Nightengale, Heartland Local Food, with Supervisor Melvyn Houser, Pottawattamie County, Iowa
• Elanor Starmer, USDA

Register for the webinar here.

This webinar is offered as a service to grantees of the federal government’s Sustainable Communities Initiative, NADO members, NACo members, and the broad community of individuals and organizations interested in regional food systems as a strategy for rural economic development.

For more information, contact Stephanie Osborn, sosborn@naco.org or 202.942.4235.

Wayne Leftwich, community planner with the City of Greenville, discusses the city’s neighborhoods during a tour of A.J. Whittenburg Elementary School.

On April 23-24, 2013 in Greenville, South Carolina, NADO hosted a Southeast Region Peer Exchange for HUD Sustainable Communities Regional Planning and Community Challenge Grantees working in rural or small metropolitan regions to develop plans and partnerships to bolster their communities’ economic competitiveness by engaging place-based strategies.

Through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the NADO Research Foundation is one of eight teams providing capacity building and technical assistance to HUD and EPA sustainable communities award recipients.  The capacity building teams are forming networks among the grantees to exchange ideas on successful strategies, lessons learned, and emerging tools for community and economic development.

Below are links to the peer exchange materials, including presentations, worksheets, and grantee background information.  If you have any questions about this peer exchange, these materials, or NADO’s work as a capacity building team, please contact Brett Schwartz.

Workshop Materials / Grantee Information 

Growing Economic Competitiveness with Place-Based Strategies
Mary Douglas Hirsch, Downtown Development Manager, City of Greenville, SC

5×5 Presentations:  Sharing What’s Working
Participant presentations

Building Local Leaders and Experts for Long-term Community Change
Linda Giltz, Senior Planner, Land-of-Sky Regional Council

Prospering as an Entrepreneurial Community
Don Macke, Director, Center for Rural Entrepreneurship

Collaborating with New Partners to Implement Community and Economic Development Plans
Participant discussion

In this session, participants discussed innovative partnerships with state agencies, philanthropic organizations, and private-sector partners. Small group discussions covered opportunities to access new partners to implement plans and projects.

Click here to download the session worksheet (PDF)

In this session, attendees had five minutes and five Powerpoint slides to describe key succeess with their project in this fast-paced series of short presentations.

Click here to download the Powerpoint presentations (PDF)

In this presentation, Mary Douglas Hirsch, Downtown Development Manager for the City of Greenville, discussed the city’s place-based investments that have established the downtown as a major economic force in the region.  Greenville has been investing in its central business district since the 1970s and today is recognized as a model for downtown redevelopment planning. Through public-private partnerships with developers, community and faith groups, and other organizations, the City has made strategic place-based investments that have allowed the downtown to become a vibrant center home to restaurants, shops, businesses, and residential housing. These investments have benefitted the city as a whole by improving neighborhoods, making streetscape improvements, providing more retail and office space, and creating opportunities for larger economic development.

Click to download the Powerpoint presentation:  Part 1 / Part 2 (PDF)

Click here to watch a recording of the webinar
Click here to download the Powerpoint slides (PDF) 

Presenters:

Chione Flegal, Associate Director, PolicyLink
Danielle Bergstrom, Program Associate, PolicyLink
Ismael Diaz Herrera, Director, San Joaquin Valley Rural Development Center
Reyna Villalobos, Community Building Specialist, Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program
Emily Saunders, Community Development Senior Project Specialist, City of Knoxville, TN

Moderator:
Brett Schwartz, Program Manager, NADO

For more information, contact Brett Schwartz at bschwartz@nado.org

The work that provided the basis for this publication was supported by funding under an award with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The substance and findings of the work are dedicated to the public. The author and publisher are solely responsible for the accuracy of the statements and interpretations contained in this publication. Such interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views of the Government.